and the next great idea could be yours. ♪ after the bell, good call. this could continue the tech rally. banks could work. like to say there is always a bull market somewhere. i always try to find it. i will see you tomorrow. good evening.

yesty a couple of big tep steps forward and today a couple of big steps back. >> good evening from newtown, connecticut. we'll have more on that coming up. >> and in washington, the nra breaks it's silence. the kudlow report starts now. >> all right let's go to john harwitt first in dc. i think i agree with what you were saying first.

he moved to plan b and the hope that further negotiations could produce progress. >> our plan b would protect american taxpayers who make $1 million or less and have their current rates extended. i continue to have hope. that would reduce spending as well as revenues on the table. >> but of course the democrats in the senate. didn't see plan b as a step forward. harry reid came out and said, john boehner is walking away from the nenegotiations.

>> every time we get down to something from the long-term financial think for this country. they do the charlie brown thing, they jerk the ball away. and this is what is going on. >> the posturing conceals the process that we are not aware of. but i talked to a budget aid that said, he thinks things are getting worse in terms for prospects of a deal. >> by the way, my contacts have said the same thing. you thank you very, very much. all of this may be defying predictions. it is a classic risk of a market rally. you know brian, you look at the market since the middle of november.

i can't believe it is all fiscal cliff. what is going on here? >> really, since the beginning of november, you have seen this removal of uncertainty. so you have china engineering a soft landing and starting to recover. you have europe away from the brink. greece got upgraded today. who would have thought it. that is what the market is looking at. saying okay. it is not going to be the worst kcase sharcenario, but you coul extend the middle class tax cuts and be done with it. it is in a recession. >> and i think the market would not like that very much. everybody is expecting that you

get the middle class tax cuts done. >> and if you can get china and europe doing better. it is hard to be terribly bearish on the u.s. >> y are going to stay with our politico expert. this is a rally that has surprised experts. it hasn't been that easy to be optimistic. >> it is. i think you have to be cautious here. the probability that this could fall apart is very, very real. >> so, you have to be careful up at these levels as a trader. i have low exposure up here. i have protection. that is how you have to play this market. stay with us please. >> yesterday it looked like washington was inching towards a deal. but today, plan b could be

signaling differences. we have karen b and sara fagan herself a former political director. i know what it means. no tax rates above $1 million. no tax hikes but why did bay nor decide to do that. what signal is he sending? >> i think what he is telling the president is look, i appreciate you coming around on this, i appreciate you giving, it is not enough. and i'm going to go to the floor and show you, that $400,000 is not a deal republicans are going to accept. the other thing that occurs that, is it is important for him that he gets a free pass to do his vote check. can he get the votes on thursday and if republican ares vote for a millionaire's tax increase,

they will vote for people making $500,000. >> harry reid dampened the market towards the end of the day. but do you buy what sara said? >> i do. we have to read what is going on. sending signals internally. the other piece of this is this vote gives people cover in terms of protecting millionaires from a restohetorical position. we can't get your $250,000. maybe there is something in between there. look at the reaction from both sides from the outside in. that tells you the contours where the activists are going to bring the pain to both sides. and you have seen he the inflation play by the president. we are the unions here. >> he has had a lot of them across the board. >> karen is right. they have had a lot of problems. see, brian, you hear what they

are saying, what this is, is very high brow, distinguished rigamarol. and knowledgeable as well. don't get me wrong. we have the best of the best here. but i could see the feds easing, europe is easing. i can see maybe profits are going to come in better. maybe we had great housing coming in today. when they are doing this toe dance, how can the market make sense of that. >> we have had the debt crisis to train us how to deal with this? you start ignoring what the politicians had to say. and that is really now traders look at it. >> i'm here to tell you, one for one doesn't work. this is going to be his biggest challenge. the racing ising of the top chae

is it. republicans aren't going to like that. and the grass roots aren't going to like that. and the only people that are going to like it are the liberals and the unions. >> but this is a big problem on spending and i think that is where the president will see the deal fall apart. they are close. pretty close. but we do need to see a net revenue, neutral plan. >> are you kidding? >> republicans want to three to four to one. >> they do want that, but they can live with the revenue neutral plan. >> one to one is insanity. >> it is not great. >> but, larry, it is not a spending increase. >> it is not helping us get anywhere. >> karen, can i tell you, i have played the game and you guys play the game. we will get the revenues and not

the lower taxes and the lower spending. we know that. >> i think you have two problems. republicans on spending. and i think democrats on spending. one doesn't want to cut and the other -- >> don't forget. part of this deal, we aren't going to get much of anything until we get closer to the deadline. that is how a deal falls apart when people start pulling it apart. the president is operating with a strong hand. republicans don't like to admit that. but the poles show that if the deal falls apart it will be on the republicans and the president is operating in good faith and democrats are willing to concede part of the president obama move is he is willing to give in. the president and boehner came forward. >> we have to get through the next week. and get into a deal next year

that is a major corporate tax reform pro poeposal and i thinkt what republican ares should do in this. because they are probably not going to get a lot in this. kick the can down the road. parameters. >> i don't love it, but if you put some. >> i'm going to be again one for one. >> one dollar revenue hike for one dollar spent is zero. >> but if you can get something next year, that will be significant. >> the increase in the budget deficit will be a lot in the next few years. >> that is the thing. you get over this hurdle as these ladies were saying, something is going to come out of that. and then you are going to come into more fiscal cliffs. we didn't cut spending so we are going bankrupt.

so how is that going to work out? >> right. and that is what i was thinking as you guys were talking. kicking the can down the road. it is not going to work for markets or businesses. they need sernl ti acertainty. that would be one of the worst case nascenarios to have this. i can you would see money flow out of the market. >> by the way, nancy pelosi wanted $1 million threshhold. everyone went back to the blogs running wild today. i've interviewed her a couple of times. can she get it? >> maybe. let me tell you what, whatever deal goes down, nancy pelosi is going to be the key to making it happen. >> all right we have to get out of here. thank you very much. next up the haeart ache and har

good-byes continue in newtown, connecticut. good evening jay. >> reporter: good evening, larry, as you might imagine another rough day here in newtown, connecticut. first graders from sandy hook elementary gathered to bury two more of their classmates here. on the other side of this, students from other schools here back to school today for the first time since the tragedy. very rough as one high schooler told us, there will be no joy in school for quite some time. we talked to parents dropping off their kids. there were tears and very apprehensive. but they knew this was something they needed to do. one parent said, look, i feel

okay about my kid, i know that the teachers here are going to do the best they can because the teachers who did at sandy hook elementary, of course referring to the women there to tried to defend their students. one of those victoria soto will be laid to rest tomorrow. but again, people here starting to talk about healing. starting to talk about normalcy of some sort. but really, what can be normal when you continue to talk about burying six and seven-year-old kids. there is nothing that fits the norm when you discuss that. >> i hear you jay, when you have the baby angels and the teachers and the administrators. that school will never reopen again will it? >> there is a debate about that. but the sentiment is that no, it

won't. we know when they go back to school, they will go to monroe, six or seven miles from here. some of the furniture that was unaffected from sandy hook has been moved there. as for the kids, still a process in the works. we are talking with counselors and with parents of the survivors. they want to make sure that they do this the right way. every one involved say it is important that they go back together. they think that is important for them. >> in a routine. jay gray, we appreciate it. thank you. all right. all right now, some better news, american oil and gas companies have so much product that they are ready to start exporting worldwide. but wait until you hear who is trying to stand in their way. free market capitalism is always the best path to prosperity.

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my next guest says that maintaining free trade is critical to economic growth. let's bring in jack girard, let me get this right. this is a fascinating tlie inin. you and your group is aligned with the white house that wanted to export liquid natural gas. and the ceo of dow chemical doesn't want you to. i don't get this. we are either for or against free trade. >> andrew is my friend as well. but we are for free trade. we are pleased that the white house is for free trade and the

department offen a energy has d analysis. the more you export the more benefit to the united states in the form of job creation. so it is a win, win for us and we should play by the free market rules of free trade. what is his beef? i'm trying to understand this beef. is it prices? >> well, it is a mother's belief that if we could keep the price of natural gas at home, it would drive the price down. the price years ago at $13 was dropped to $3 wbecause of the free market. we need to let the free market work continue to produce the

natural gas and where appropriate export it to keep that economic activity going and andrew and others will continue to have vast supplies of natural gas at affordable prices. >> if you are exporting, there is going to be global price setting as there is in the oil business. i understand they are on the cheap side right now, but that price is determined by all sales at the margin. >> we should remember, as you pointed out, it is the laws of supply and demand. the more supply in the marketplace the better off we are. we should think of the vast resource we have right here in the united states of natural gas and of oil. it was reported by the energy agency, that if we continue the oil production.

we can surpass saudi arabia by 2020. it is good for the country and good for whik recovery. drill drill drill. keystone pipeline. thank you very much. >> good to talk toular you, lar. remember the pickets union members? the story coming up next. [ male announcer ] with wells fargo advisors envision planning process,

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good evening bertha. >> good evening. hopefully it will be averted. the director of the port authority is encouraging the authorities and passengers and cargo airlines to work together and resolve their differences. they want more training and better equipment. the port authority says a strike would be disruptive. and software sales rose 17%.

results suggest that it hasn't crimped it spending. and a sweet story about a honeymoon at the waldorf astoria 60 years ago. the hotel honors an veries if you have your receive. he and his wife thought it would be nice to have pancakes for breakfast. but the pancakes were at the 2012 rate which is $24 for room service. $21 for the room, $24 for the breakfast. larry, everything goes up, and this was the second time they did it this year. they had a couple that paid $16.80.

>> plus the pancakes. but that is a far cry from the pensional suite which is $8,000 a night. >> the nation still looking for answers after the newtown shootings. right now more information about this mass killer. we are about to talk about all of this with two former fbi profiling experts. that is next up. ♪

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welcomebo back to the kudlo report. taxes are going up. you will be paying more in the coming year. the question is will this be a blow to the already anemic economy. and speaking of threats, a major union close to a strike that would cripple all retailers in every state of the union. you haven't heard about it yet but you will hear about it in the show. first up, in the wake of last friday's mass murder in newtown,

connectic connecticut. the white house announced that president obama will support a federal assault weapons ban. and the nra has broken it's silence. >> good evening. the national rival association is breaking it's sigh length le mass murders in connecticut. saying it is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to make sure it never happens again. other major developments today, private equity giant capital management is selling it's stake in the freedom group after one of those guns was used in the school shootings.

and the fallout from the violence in connecticut impacting the fiscal cliff negotiations here in washington. house speaker, john boehner, talking about a different kind of stress. >> i would agree to that, this is a difficult time for americans that is why we continue to have conversations with the white house. i continue to have home that we can reach an agreement. it is not a time to put americans through more stress. and we learned thad that president obama called west virginia congressman joe mansion. and the white house confirming today president obama says he will support senator feinstien's plans to ban assault weapons when congress reconvenes next

year. >> there are reports tonight that the connecticut shooter may have snapped because of the fear of being committed to a psychiatric facility. what do we know? joining us on the phone former senior fbi profiler, mary ellen o'toole. to both of you thank you for helping on a difficult subject. what do you make of this story that the mother was going to send him to psychiatric institute and he got angry and that was one motive for his shooting her? >> well, that certainly could be one of the motives but what you mentioned earlier about the snapping would not in my opinion be correct. that this was not an impulsive crime. there was planning involved and

the thoughts of suicide and homicide could have gone back many years in fact. but the planning is what is important. there was a period of time he was putting together a plan to carry out what he did on friday regardless of the stressor that may have occurred several days before. >> and don clark, among other things, the guy tried to destroy his computer, i guess he did destroy his hard drive. others are saying because the mother was friendly with the school principal and counselors there and that she loved the kids at the school more than thshe loved him. does that work for you? >> that doesn't work for me. i think it is a longer process. this wasn't an overnight i'm

upset with my parents so i'm going to do something this terrible. what we saw here was a plan that was taken long before. this does not happen overnight. this individual has been looking at this and wanting to go this way and gets the resources. look at how he was dressed and what he was doing. that did not come from an argument with parents or an outsider. >> the die corrected the hard drive of the computer. can the forensic people put that back together again? there is allegedly a second compuco computer and a cell phone. won't that help? >> it would be immensely helpful if information could be obtained off of the computers and the cell phone. that is what we would be looking for to get inside his world

where he was making notations and felt that no one else was looking. that is the kind of information that would be critical to us. we want to know who is he talking to. but i want to know, what about couns elling? if he was going to be committed in the near term, he must have had appointments, we don't know anything about that yet. >> well, you are right. we haven't heard anything about that. but keep in mind that the investigation is on going and what the attorneys want to do now is try to put it together before, but clearly they have to look far beyond the day of the terrible incident and see what was this young man doing all along and the thing that is he didn't do or should have been doing? >> what else are the experts

trying to discover and how are they going about it? >> well, i think one thing that is important is, they are going to be looking at the behavioral aspects of the crime sweeps themselves. they are going to be looking for in their interviews and based on evidence at the scenes, what the offender's actions were there at the school. for example, during the period of time that he was in the classrooms and shooting, what was his behavior like? was he frantic or frenzied, cool and calm, controlled and collected. that will tell us more about this personality. how do we get that kind of information? >> well, you have to go back and tra trace what this individual was doing. when you look at how he was dressed, this has been going on a long time.

there has to be a lot of interviewing that is going to take place. what he was doing to figure out what his intension was. but why did he go through with it. they talk about as burger and so forth. what is your take? >> well, that is a greaeat question and i'm glad that you asked that. here is the test, did this visual know the nature and the quality of his behavior and did he know whether or not it was wrong. and my experience with these cases and my knowledge of what has been made public is this is an individual who engaged in long-term planning and who w carried out that plan in a thoughtful way. he knew what he was doing and he knew the consequences.

he is responsible and he knows right from wrong. take the asberger's out of the picture. whether or not he is psychopathic, we will know once we know the crime scene. the hallmark of that is a lack of guilt or empathy. and that is very distinctionive of other mental disorders that we are aware of. >> thank you. very helpful. now back to washington d.c. whether a fiscal cliff deal includes a rate hike the fact is a tax is a tax. and a huge amount of money will move from the private sector to the government. by the way, it isn't going to solve the deficit. let's go to doug holts president of the american action forum.

i think too few people have exam inned the impact of this thing. one way or the other, that is a lot of money draining from the private sector to the government. i would have to agree with you, this is an economy. i would put p it into one perce and you hear people talk about the numbers. but underneath the numbers you have to worry about the quality of the policy. it is the worst way to raise revenue, and that is attribute to the fact that the politics are trumping the politics right now. >> in economic turns if you put a 39.6% tax rate on millionaires and above, if you do that, would that be the least ownerous thing

you have heard so far? >> i think the goal should be, the least we've seen so far. but it didn't get a great reception on the other side of the i'll. it remains to be seen what we will get. we are going to see a 3.8% increase on taxes and investments on the health care reform. so the notion that we are dodging a tax increase is not true. the question is how big will it be? >> i hear a lot of people talk about business men and women who will be filled with new certainty and confidence if we get a deal. if that deal puts out until next year and i don't see why is that so confidence inspiring? >> i hope we don't have an

across the board tax hike. we are going to go to the next fiscal cliff. >> it is not going to solve the problems. it is going to require something between 4 and $6 trillion over the next decade. the bulk of that has to be on the spending side. and so, we are not going to see anything like that between now and the end of this year. we will need to do mufundamenta tax reform and that is proving to be difficult. regardless of what you think of in washington, that is not going to be over. >> two quick things. the pay roll tax cut is dead? >> it looks that way. let me ask you first of all. does a debt ceiling increase have to be part of this package?

it does have to happen. we have to raise the debt ceiling there is no question about that. many believe it provides the public with conservatives. i think getting that done and getting on to the substance of reform should be the agenda. >> the last one, dog. the alternative minimum tax. will that be patched in this deal? >> it has to be. >> all right great stuff. thank you very much. we appreciate it. we are going to get back to the stock markets. it has torque across the board. we are going to look at it just ahead. [ male announcer ] citi turns 200 this year.

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mid november's closing low.

america, you are right now betting wealthier. >> if i didn't know better, i would say it is a roaring boom market. >> it feels like a growth, optimistic world. and then you say, what am i missing here? monitoris many is becoming more fashionable. well there are charts if you look at the last four years since the financial crisis. we have seen it around the world. there has been a positive relationship.

there is evidence to support the theory. when you see the fed lowering interest rates, it looks for attractive. there has been some of that going on and i hope that lower yields printing this money is going to help spur some groemg. but i buy into that too, broadly. you have financials up 8%. materials and commodity stocks are up. >> and watch on that, because we are focused on the u.s. for a lot of good reasons right now. we have the new chinese government in recent days.

you are seeing better data out of asia. some of the demand expected by china is influencing this demand too. does that contribute to all of this? >> totally. i'm sorry for changing the subject but i'm so tired of talking about it. it is easy to fix ate on the u.s. rally. it has nothing to do with china or the u.s. it has to do with the new japanese government. the bank of japan is meeting on wednesday or thursday.

the trick here for the american investors is to remember the currency. you have to experience it. it sounds like the federal reserve. so this idea. the cliff may be overrated. i'm curious to see what happens. you mentioned the debt ceiling in the show. if obama gets that, he is going to give a lot back. if obama gets that lifted now. so we don't have to have the fight. he is going to have to give up a lot. but i agree. if we can take that off the table, we don't have to fight that fight that is a positive.

>> you stay low in the market. i'm under weight equities and overweight credit. i want to see what the deal looks like before i add. >> strike could slam businesses from maine to texas and all points in between. it could damage our economy. impact life expectancy in the u.s., real estate in hong kong, and the optics industry in germany? at t. rowe price, we understand the connections of a complex, global economy. it's just one reason over 75% of our mutual funds beat their 10-year lipper average. t. rowe price. invest with confidence. request a prospectus or summary prospectus with investment information, risks, fees and expenses to read and consider carefully before investing.

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here is a major strike threat you haven't heard about yet. the longshoremen is threatening to strike. and now they are urging president obama to intervene. let's talk to the vice of the supply chain. jonathan that is what will get disrupted. cuts off all manners of stores and businesses. ha is true. >> did you get a response from the letter? >> and you rrnt hoaren't holdin

breath. >> it is critical and there is a lot at stake with the way the economy is right now. it is going to be kig cansignif. >> they are recovering from super storm sandy. >> what do they want that the port managers won't give them? >> that is for the union and the port managers to discuss. we just want them to remain at the table. >> is it wages, health benefits? is it the usual stuff? >> everything is on the table as well as issues from what management wants as far as how to make the port more efficient.

in order for both sides to reach an agreement they need to stay at the table. >> what role if any will your retail federation take? >> we have been working to education congress and others within the industries to get engaged. one only needs to look back to 2002 to see what kind of damage the disruption has on the economy. we went through a strike that we are recovering from and folks are trying to figure out what the impact was. >> how bad was 2002. it was fairly significant. the 2002 ten day lock out cost the u.s. economy $1 billion a day and took over six months to recover from.

you are talking about the whole east coast. >> this is broader. it could be the global economy as well. >> all right we will leave it there. that is it for tonight's show. i will say this, union militan militantsy could drive this economy into the ground. they may have grievances but with a weak economy, and high unemployment this is not the time everybody is going to have to share in whatever sacrifices are made and i hope president obama comes out and says that otherwise all recovery could be off track. thank you for watching. [ female announcer ] if you care for someone with mild to moderate alzheimer's,

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